


longdrawn carol, mournful holy

by persepoline



Series: with swollen dreams and rising sweats [2]
Category: Natsume Yuujinchou | Natsume's Book of Friends
Genre: Angst and Humor, Dissociation, Established Relationship, Explicit Consent, Eye Trauma, Lingerie, M/M, Unflappable Makeup Artist and Hapless Clan Employee make another cameo appearance!, seiji's totally uncomplicated and rational feelings about his scar, there is astonishingly little witch cult stuff in this one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-19
Updated: 2019-06-19
Packaged: 2020-05-15 00:31:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19284409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/persepoline/pseuds/persepoline
Summary: Shuuichi smiled. “You’ve got a real morbid streak, you know that?”“Yes.” Seiji said, “I’m told it runs in the family.”yeah so this was meant to be a fun story about lingerie but instead it’s about *checks notes* oh right, latent grief and trauma!





	longdrawn carol, mournful holy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lavendre](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lavendre/gifts).



> Lo, I’ve done two things I swore I’d never do again: smut, and Matoba’s POV. This fic gets progressively less and less plausible the deeper into it you go. Every time i try to write anything even remotely naughty, it dissolves immediately into nonsense, which is probably for the best.
> 
> “The Love Suicides at Amijima” is a real play by Chikamatsu Monzaemon. It’s a bunraku play, traditionally staged using puppets, but for the purposes of this fic I have re-imagined it staged with a full human cast rather than a single puppeteer and their assistant.

It started, as most things tended to, as a cruel joke or happy accident. To Matoba Seiji, the difference was inconsequential.

Backstage, there was a fluttering: curtains pushed aside for prying eyes, swept out of the way on an overhead track; people moving organically around each other in little fits and bursts of action, filling in the negative space. Microphones hissing and fizzing during sound checks. Lights winking like tossed coins, catching trails of runaway vapor from the fog machines that sputtered away in the wings.

Being here felt a bit like being in a forest at noon, in early autumn or late summer. Everything kinetic. Nothing still.

Of course, things that lived in forests tended not to smoke Mairudo Sebun, though. Seiji coughed into his sleeve and shot a pointed side-eye in the direction of a nearby makeup artist, who made everything within a five-foot radius considerably less visible every time she exhaled.

“Do you mind?” He coughed again, this time for emphasis.

The woman - angular in the face, and with a small pictograph of a sparrow etched into the skin just behind the shell of her left ear, something she assumed was beyond notice, he suspected - she looked down her nose at him, perched as she was on a towering artist’s chair, and took another long drag.

Seiji stared her down. Wordlessly, she stared right back.

“I hope you don’t smoke those things while you’re…” his eye flicked over the array of pastes and powders spread across her workspace, “...drawing on people’s faces, or whatever it is they pay you for.”

The woman exhaled, and visibility decreased again. This time, Matoba was certain she was aiming for him specifically.

 _If she gets Shuuichi sick,_ Matoba thought, _well._ He might be forced to reconsider his commitment to protecting the human race.

He considered telling her as much, but the woman had already turned her back to him, and was making a preposterous show of cleaning her brushes. The sparrow behind her ear mocked him.

“Hey.”

A warm hand alighted on the nape of Seiji’s neck, and he fought for half a second to keep from flinching. A lesser man might have lost his composure.

“Stop staring,” said Natori, his breath hot in Seiji’s ear. “You’ve seen a tattoo before.”

Matoba frowned despite himself. He had not been that obvious, surely.

“It’s distasteful.”

“Hush.” Natori squeezed his shoulder, thumb running over the knob of bone at the top of his spine. “Be civil.” He turned to the makeup woman. “What does Matsuo-san have in store for me next?”

The conversation dissolved into theater jargon and names Seiji did not care to remember. Tonight marked the final dress rehearsal for what would be Natori’s stage debut...or rather, his first appearance onstage that did not involve trumpets and/or clumsy lip-syncing. Shuuichi’s agency, it seemed, did not yet trust him to do his own singing - though Natori had mentioned wryly that the producer was pushing for it, it was only a matter of time now.

Seiji let a hand flutter to cover his mouth. He was well-versed in stifling yawns and sneezes - years of dull clan council meetings and seances full of thick incense had taught him well. He could stifle a yawn inaudibly, invisibly, with everyone in the room none the wiser - but it didn’t hurt to remind Natori every once in a while that his work was terribly boring and that Matoba would rather be elsewhere. It was mostly for show; surely Shuuichi knew that, but. But. _Best keep him on his toes, mm?_

He gave Natori’s elbow a brief squeeze before stepping back, shot the makeup woman a long look before melting into the darkness of the wings, and quit their company in favor of Shuuichi’s dressing room and the peace and quiet it afforded him.

The room itself was cramped, nestled at the base of a rickety staircase that spiraled straight upwards into the gloom of the rafters. This was one of the oldest Western-style theaters in the country: he’d been told so by the plaque bolted over the building’s entrance. Matoba had had occasion to visit Natori’s trailers on movie sets before. It wasn’t as if he was at Shuuichi’s beck and call, but he did make himself available from to time to time, so as to provide...moral support. Of a fashion.

He trailed a fingertip down the staircase’s gilded banister. It came away black with dust.

The dressing room was dim when Matoba let himself in, poorly lit by a ring of bare bulbs inset into the perimeter of the mirror that took up an entire wall. He caught a glimpse of himself reflected in its surface, and found eerily that he did not look at all the way he’d pictured. Seiji did not avoid mirrors, but he didn’t seek them out either. In truth, he didn’t think about them much at all. He leaned closer and pressed a palm to the glass, expecting the image to warp and ripple like water, but instead it stayed. Static.

There came a knock on the door.

He straightened. “Come in.”

But the person standing in the doorway was not Natori, merely one of the overall-clad host of theater maintenance staff, faceless in their cleaning masks. They might as well be shiki.

“Yes?” Matoba cleared his throat as the girl - _girl? he squinted_ \- looked about the dressing room in scarcely concealed wonderment. “Were you sent for?”

“On behalf of the owner,” she said, dislodging her mask - _ah, girl then_ \- to speak clearly. She proffered a bouquet of white carnations and a box wrapped in pinstriped paper.

 _On behalf of the owner?_  She meant the owner of the venue, no doubt.

“He’s rehearsing,” Matoba said, reaching out. “I’ll take them.”

The girl seemed to hesitate for a moment, seemed to weigh her options and decide that she did not really care weather the famous TV star received his flowers or not, and handed them over.

“Make sure Natori-san gets them,” she said politely. “This, too.” From the front pocket of her overalls she drew a metal cylinder: canned coffee. Seiji shuddered.

“I will,” he told her, and held out his hand.

 

**. . .**

 

Hours passed before Natori returned to the dressing room.

Matoba bided his time: traced protective wards in the dust on the mirror, arranged and rearranged the carnations in their plastic vase and, with grudging indignity, drank Shuuichi’s horrible coffee out of its can.

This was clearly not part of the original gift, Seiji mused as he swallowed the drink and grimaced at its acidity. There was no way the venue’s management had intended for something this foul to be included in their welcome package. Far more likely that this was a personal gift, added on a whim by the deliverer at her own discretion.

Seiji held the half-empty can up to one of the yellowing bulbs and considered it. Then, he proceeded to drop it and let its contents spill all over his trousers.

Natori returned while Matoba was cursing himself in a number of dead languages.

“Everything alright?” He asked amiably in that Amiable Shuuichi Way he always did. Seiji rolled the eye that allowed for rolling.

“A well-wisher called while you were out.” He nodded at the parcel that sat unwrapped on the dresser beside the flowers. “I think she laid a hex on me.”

“Oh?” The look on Natori’s face was a mild one. He was eyeing the box with slight trepidation.

“She didn’t,” Seiji amended. “It’s safe to open.”

Natori raised an eyebrow. “I wasn’t worried.” In a single motion he tore the pinstriped paper off the box, balled it up and tossed it in the direction of the wastepaper bin in the corner. He missed by a yard, and looked momentarily disappointed in himself.

“Are you sure we’ve not been hexed?” he asked.

Matoba was still bitterly dabbing at his coffee-soaked dress pants, and against his first instinct said, “Quite sure,” and, “Do you have a change of clothes?” He supposed ill-fitting trousers were better than stained ones.

Off to one side of the room stood an assembly of shoji screens. Natori pointed in their direction. “There should be spares back there,” he said, an amused smile playing at the corner of his mouth. “If you search hard enough, you may even manage to find something without sequins.”

Seiji absolutely Did Not make a face, and reluctantly went to check.

 

**. . .**

 

His life was very simple, really. Always had been.

He had duties to fulfill, responsibilities to see to, and he saw to them. He had one job and he did it. If he weren’t so good at that job, his life might have been more complicated. But complication, it seemed, was not in the cards.

Now he rooted in a trunk of stage costumes and marveled at the indignity of it all. This was Shuuichi’s fault somehow - Shuuichi who, at this rate, Matoba was sure he would follow anywhere. He discarded a ruffled Jacobean collar with a sigh.

The first item of clothing he encountered that did not come with rhinestones attached was a neatly folded square of fabric at the bottom of the trunk. He felt a wave of abject relief and pulled it on immediately, only to find that it was not long enough to reach even his knees.

 _Cargo shorts?_ That wouldn’t do. He looked down, and found to his horror that the article of clothing was, in fact, a skirt - of the variety that secretaries wore.

“How are you coming along?” Natori’s voice drifted from the other side of the screen.

“Er, fine.”

“Then come out here and try one of these,” Natori called.

Distracted, Matoba poked his head around the screen’s frame. “One of what?”

Natori did not answer. He was seated on the low stool beside the dresser and had what looked like a cherry stem sticking out from between his lips. Wordlessly, he offered the box: bright autumn cherries, the exorbitantly expensive kind. They sat in neat rows, glinting like polished stones.

Matoba decided the clothing fiasco could wait, and came out from behind the screen to sit directly in Natori’s lap.

“Do you think this an appropriate gift?” he asked, plucking one of the cherries from its box. “From the venue, I mean. It’s the sort of thing people bring to the parents of their betrothed. Slightly lurid, isn’t it? Or do you plan on wedding the theater in anything more than an abstract capacity?”

“You’re just trying to distract me,” Natori said around a mouthful of cherry, “while you eat them all.”

Matoba nodded. After all, his life was very simple really.

Natori let a hand drop to Seiji’s knee, and looked surprised to feel flesh instead of fabric. He looked down and, for the first time, noticed the skirt.

 _Don’t you dare_ , Matoba was ready to warn. _Don’t you dare say anything_.

But instead of teasing, something curious happened.

“Good gracious,” said Matoba after a tense silence. “Did you just get hard?”

“No,” said Natori indignantly.

“You did! Good grief. I never pinned you for a degenerate.”

Natori had gone red. This never happened. It was unheard of. Seiji could count on one hand the number of times he’d seen Shuuichi flustered, and those occasions had been few and far between.

“You’re not allowed to call me a degenerate when _you’re the one wearing a skirt_ ,” he pointed out.

“Don’t talk nonsense. Besides,” said Matoba, grinding ever so lightly against Natori’s groin. Natori let a small moan escape his lips and put his head in his hands. He looked as though he was having the worst day of his life, and was enjoying it.

“Mhm,” Seiji said. “My point exactly.”

Natori leaned forward, resting his head on Seiji’s shoulder. Its weight was pleasant, and Seiji rested his cheek against Natori’s golden curls. Natori’s hands found his hips, tugging him closer.

 _Finally_ , Matoba thought. _An end to the tech week monotony_. He moved against Natori, softly and first, and then with growing urgency. Natori exhaled loudly and without grace, his hands fisting in the pleated fabric of the skirt before sliding round to grab at Seiji’s thighs.

Shuuichi kissed him, so lightly it reminded Seiji of walking through spiderwebs. His lips were warm, and he was so distracted by the sensation that he nearly forgot to kiss back. When Matoba failed to react, Natori held him by the chin, tilting his head so he could slide his tongue inside.

Pleased, Seiji pressed against Natori again, and felt Natori’s hips stutter under him. Shuuichi’s hands skimmed beneath the hem of the skirt, fingers working their way further up Seiji’s thighs, palming the supple flesh there.

There came a sudden banging on the dressing room door.

“Five minutes ‘til curtain!”

Natori dropped his head into Matoba’s shoulder. “See?” he groaned. “Hexed.”

 

**. . .**

 

Funny things, mirrors. There weren’t too many in the central clan estate - the building dated back pre-Meiji, when mirrors had been a rare and pricey commodity, an unjustifiable expense. There were none installed in the lavatories, nor in the bath house. In fact, there wasn’t really any way to have any installed without inflicting unnecessary damage upon the house’s core infrastructure, and the only full-length mirrors Seiji had seen about the estate growing up were the prop-up ones that had to be wheeled in and out of each room like shields.

An odd sight: to see a cheap lightweight prop-up mirror - from one of these flimsy Scandinavian manufacturers, no doubt - standing at attention in his mother’s room. Seiji recalled her turning and tilting before it, checking the fit of her robes. In his memory, Nanase moves forward to help her tie the obi at the back, but his mother waves her away, beckons Seiji close.

“Not so long ago, they were made using silver and plate glass.” His mother indicated the mirror with a tilt of the head. He recalled her firm hands on his shoulders, even now, guiding him until he stood in front of her. “Nowadays,” she said, “they’re backed using other materials - aluminum, mostly. Tin and chloride.”

There were youkai that traveled through reflective surfaces, she explained, but couldn’t appear in mirrors - something to do with the silver. In times past, it was such that the greater the number of mirrors in your household, the lesser the risk of the ayakashi getting in. Only nowadays, the opposite was true. But there were words, his mother instructed, that could be chanted: words of purity, words that could make any mirror into a barrier - a gate, standing strong between their world and Elsewhere.

That particular memory was rough - blurred around the edges; the harder Seiji concentrated, the less he was able to remember. What was the time of day? For what occasion had his mother dressed up? What had the family eaten for breakfast that morning? What season was it?

Seiji tried not to think on it often - mustn’t grasp at lost details lest they scatter, frightened, running from the pursuit of his clumsy, groping memory. But there was one picture he recalled with perfect clarity: a boy and a woman, her hands resting on his shoulders. They stared solemnly out at him, their images reversed.

Funny things, mirrors.

In Natori’s world, they were everywhere: in hallways and elevators and hotel rooms and other people’s mansions.

On ceilings, even. On floors.

He did think of it that way - _Natori’s world_. Try as he might to dispel the notion, Seiji felt sometimes that he and Shuuichi inhabited entirely different planes of existence; they dipped occasionally into each other’s pocket universes, only to be drawn back out again like marionettes on invisible thread. Every trip he took into the glittering city with its karaoke bars and press conferences and instant television streaming services felt like a foray - like an expedition into uncharted territory, for which he’d arrived woefully unprepared.

And then there were the mirrors.

Seiji had no need of them and yet, here he was, standing in a deserted foyer somewhere in the very guts of the theater, hunched close to the glass.

What use was a mirror in a place like this, in a basement hallway that received no traffic? It would sooner occur to him to install a mirror at the bottom of a well, or at the top of a mountain.

The vanity of it unnerved him. _Natori’s world_ , he thought. _Natori’s rules_.

Sounds echoed from overhead, muffled harp strings.

A piano key pressed in a beat too long.

Somewhere far above, the orchestra was warming up.

“I could show you how to cover that scar, you know.”

Hiyori stood at the end of the hall, iced coffee in one hand and palette bag in the other. Matoba drew slowly back from the mirror and felt, vaguely, like a snake coiled in on itself, preparing to strike.

“What scar?” Seiji’s voice sounded sickly sweet, even to his own ears.

Hiyori matched his impassive stare. “The one you’re hiding behind all those layers of gauze. Or do you like the attention?” Nothing in the tone of her voice or the set of her shoulders or the muscles in her face suggested she had inquired in the spirit of anything other than frank curiosity. And yet, somewhere in the pit of Seiji’s stomach, a knife was twisting just for him.

“Cover it? With makeup, you mean? Oh, I would never,” he said, smiling thinly. “Not when Shuuichi-san likes it so much.”

The makeup woman wrinkled a brow, puzzlement plain on her face.

“Alright, suit yourself.”

He widened his smile. He hoped she could see each and every one of his teeth. Seiji turned to the exit, but not before he caught Hiyori ash her cigarette in his direction.

 

**. . .**

 

And Shuuichi _did_ like it.

The scar.

Matoba could tell.

“What are you doing?” He’d asked one night when he felt Natori’s fingertips trace the outline of the eyepatch against his scalp in the dim lamplight.

“I want to look at you,” Natori had said, voice pale. Eyes in shadow.

Seiji had shifted, leaned back against the pillow as his lover tugged at the ties that kept the charmed bandage in place. “You _are_ looking at me.”

“ _All of you_.” Natori breathed the words against his skin.

Seiji obliged, and carefully folded the moment, and tucked it into a drawer at the back of his mind to think on later.

_He likes it._

This ought to make Seiji happy.

_He likes it._

But.

 

**. . .**

 

It had started, as most things tended to, as a cruel joke or happy accident. The difference was inconsequential - it might have been the cherries, or the spilt coffee, or simply ill luck...but the reason didn’t matter, did it? Not when the end result put Seiji in the position of having to ask a minor clan secretary to discreetly pick up his lingerie from the post office.

“Matoba-sama?”

The young man stood at the threshold of his room, quaking with what Seiji hoped was fear rather than amusement.

He set his calligraphy brush aside. “State your business.”

The secretary ( _Hirokazu? Akihito? He’d no recollection_ ) took a shaky step forward and presented a parcel.

“Your um. Uh. Your.” The young man looked so nervous he might vomit.

Seiji sighed. “Have your wits deserted you? Speak plainly, Hiroto-san.”

“Your package arrived, Matoba-sama. I picked it up, uh, like you asked. And it’s Ryusei, sir.”

Seiji accepted the parcel. It was a heart-shaped cardboard box of middling size, wrapped in pink washi paper. The order label was stamped in deep red ink across the box’s lid: **THANK YOU FOR ORDERING FROM SPICY LINGERIE INC <3**

 _So much for discretion_.

The clan typically received mail in two ways: solicited mail, which required hand-delivery by a shiki or its master. Unsolicited mail intake was facilitated via an intricate system of P.O. boxes, with secretaries checking each parcel for curses and the like at every transaction point before forwarding the package on to the next destination. The problem with the former method was that ordinary delivery services had no shiki and therefore no way of ensuring that an order was delivered to Matoba personally. Any mail delivered to the main estate address was subject to inspection and cataloguing by Nanase, and under these circumstances that was…..out of the question.

Which left him with no option but the latter.

 _Natori likes the scar_. Well, what else did Natori like? ~~Skirts, apparently.~~

Matoba set the box beneath his writing desk and resumed the ward he had been drawing. “Thank you, Junichiro-san. You are dismissed.”

“It’s Ryusei, sir.”

“You are dismissed, thank you.”

Seiji waited until he heard the door slide closed and the secretary’s footsteps grow faint before he quietly removed the box’s lid.

He bit his lip to keep from smiling.

So Natori liked the scar. Seiji could not change this. But surely - surely he would like this more.

Seiji bit his lip so hard he drew blood.

 

**. . .**

 

“Natori Shuuichi’s cheekbones ache with grief in Kobayashi’s production of _The Love Suicides at Amijima_. Youth is both the defect and the virtue of this production. Taking his bow to cheers on opening night, Natori’s performance points a way forward: his is a 21st-century, post-adolescent tragicomic hero---”

Matoba cut himself off, putting the newspaper down. “ _Cheekbones ache with grief?_ ”

Natori sat beside him on the couch, doubled over and clutching his stomach, his shoulders wracked with peals of laughter.

“How can your cheekbones _ache with grief?_ ” Matoba asked incredulously. “They’re cheekbones!”

Natori collapsed, shaking, into Matoba’s lap.

“What,” he said, in-between fits of laughter, “You mean my cheekbones don’t regularly do that?”

Matoba shook his head. "Not that I've noticed."

“Damn. The vitamins aren’t working, then. I suppose I shouldn’t have bought into that Instagram pyramid scheme.” Natori erupted into laughter once more.

Seiji didn’t understand Shuuchi’s jokes at times, but he had to concede: the review was very badly written. He tossed the newspaper across the dressing room; it hit the opposite wall and bounced into an unused costume rack.

“They liked you, at least,” he said, running a hand through Natori’s hair - stiff with hairspray from the matinee performance that ended half an hour earlier.

“Yes,” agreed Shuuichi, sobering up. “At least there’s that.” He sat up, straightened. “I was a bit worried, actually.” He stood, pushing off the couch and drifting over to the dressing room mirror. “You know the shogun actually asked Chikamatsu to stop writing them? Formally, I mean. The love suicide plays.”

Seiji watched Natori’s reflection straighten its tie - “it”, because _no, it wasn’t a person, was it?_ The image in the mirror. Just like the secretaries and janitors, it might as well be shiki.

“Did he?”

“Mm.” Natori’s reflection rubbed its eyes. “His material was so popular, couples started killing themselves to pay him tribute. It got so bad, the government had to ask him to write something else for a change. It must have seemed very romantic, back then. Lovers’ suicide. Not much else to do during the Tokugawa, I suppose.”

The reflection turned its back on Matoba as Natori turned to face him. “Terribly morbid, don’t you think?”

Seiji stared past Natori, at the back of the reflection’s head. “Not really.”

Shuuichi smiled. “That’s because you have a real morbid streak, you know that?”

“Yes.” Seiji stood, smoothing his yukata, pressing creases from the dark fabric. “I’m told it runs in the family.”

This time, when Matoba kissed him, Natori made a little surprised noise. Perhaps it was because he had just put his tongue straight in, Matoba reflected. _Oh well_. There seemed little point in waiting when he could just put his tongue right where he wanted it, which coincidentally was as deep into Shuuichi’s mouth as it could go.

He felt Natori push the yukata off his left shoulder, then stop. Seiji pulled back to find Natori blinking and intrigued.

“What’s this?”

Natori tucked a fingertip under the lacey strap that arched its way up over Seiji’s shoulder. Wordlessly, Matoba shrugged the rest of the yukata off. Out of the corner of his eye he caught sight of a dark-haired young man, standing there in frilly black briefs held in place with matching garters. _Someone else. That’s someone else_. It wasn’t an unpleasant thought, merely...foreign. Alien to him entirely. Identity was not subject to fluctuation - not for him. There must have been times when he did not feel like Matoba Seiji, but those occasions were so few and far between that he had scarcely noticed them before.

Natori grabbed at his waist and pulled him closer, ran hands up his torso, ran them back down to grip the curve of his backside.

“Oh my god,” Natori breathed. (The reaction was better than Seiji could have hoped for: Shuuichi’s voice even hitched a little.)

If he hadn’t been utterly spellbound by Natori’s abrupt and undivided attention, Matoba would have burst out laughing. “Are…..are you okay?”

Natori looked at him with wild eyes.

“I want to fuck you like this,” he said, low and grating, almost tripping over his words. “Please, can I?”

“I, uh.” Matoba’s face felt hot from the blood rushing to his head - likely a side effect of the secondhand embarrassment, a sentiment he was feeling so strongly at the moment that he almost forgot the reason he’d undertaken this scheme in the first place. “Ah, yes-- that is, I mean, of course. Do you have any-- ?”

As it turned out, Natori did in fact keep lube in his dressing room. Truly, he ought to have seen it coming, Seiji mused. Natori was full of surprises, and this wasn’t one of them.

He wasted no time in getting Matoba ready. Seiji helped him, unbuckling Natori’s belt and taking his cock in hand to spread lube along its shaft. When Natori wrapped strong arms about his waist and hoisted him up onto the lip of the dressing table, Matoba set to work on his shirt buttons, but only halfway down before he felt Natori tugging impatiently at the scalloped hems of his stockings.

“Hm, let me--”

He made to reach down to remove his underwear, but Natori simply pulled his panties aside.

“Do you need--?”

 _Any further preparation_. Seiji shook his head and pulled Natori into a breathless kiss, glad to finally have his back to the mirror. He felt the flat of Shuuichi’s tongue glide across his own as Shuuichi pushed steadily into him.

 

**. . .**

 

 _Why do you like it?_ He wanted to ask.

It did not often trouble him. Just when Shuuichi was asleep. Just when the light was low. Just when he caught his own image reflected back at him in a passing mirror.

_Is it because it makes me fallible?_

Something that could be scarred could be killed.

_Do you fear me still?_

It didn’t often trouble him.

_Does the scar make me any less a threat?_

Just when the light was low.

 

**. . .**

 

It was a strange thing, finding the lace undergarments in their laundry the next day. Matoba fished through the contents of the tumble-dryer in search of a favored hoodie, only to discover instead frilled panties and matching bralette. He regarded them with suspicion for a moment - suspicion and something akin to that disoriented, queasy feeling of finding somebody else’s family occupying one’s childhood home: strange things, strange articles, strange timeline.

It felt as though he had stumbled across another person’s life.

 _Natori’s world_ , he reminded himself. _Natori’s rules_.

“What’ve you got there?” Shuuichi leaned in over Seiji’s shoulder to get a better look at what he held. “Oh, that.” He pressed a kiss to Matoba’s temple. “I liked that.”

“Not as much as my scar, though.”

For a moment, Seiji thought he might not say it. Now that it was said, he found himself holding his breath - as if he could press pause on the world and, for a very brief moment, it seemed that he had: the air went still. The air went quiet.

“Why say that?” Natori was frowning.

There was a mirror inset into the wall across from the dryer. Matoba tried not to look at it. “Really, Shuuichi. I can tell what you like.”

Natori’s frown deepened. “I don’t _like_ your scar. Not like that. Not in the way you’re implying.”

“You shouldn’t act when you’re not onstage. It’s unbecoming and besides, you have no audience here.”

Natori sputtered incredulously. “I mean, I don’t _not_ like it.”

Matoba tossed the lingerie back into the dryer. He considered resuming his search for the hoodie, but now did not seem a prudent time for that. Instead, he moved carefully around Shuuichi and into the kitchen.

“Am I _not supposed_ to like it?” Natori countered, following him through. “How are you cross with me for _not disliking your face?_ ”

Matoba filled the electric kettle, set it in its plastic base and flicked the switch. “That wasn’t my point,” he said sharply.

Natori pinched the bridge of his nose. “Oh, you had a point? I hadn’t realized.”

The kettle rumbled, spilling steam into the late morning air.

Seiji stared down at Shuuichi’s polished granite countertops. His life was very simple, really. Very simple. This did not bother him. He was tired. That was all.

“Whose form did it take?”

Seiji looked up, startled. “Pardon?”

“The creature,” Natori said, “when it gave you the scar.” He lifted a hand, drew a slender forefinger across his right eye socket to indicate the injury. “Who did it look like?

Seiji picked at a loose thread on the hem of his tracksuit. “I don’t remember.”

“Bullshit.”

“I don’t.”

“Who did it look like?”

Seiji inhaled, deep and slow, to steady himself. Behind him, the water had reached its boiling point, and he heard the click of the kettle as it switched itself off again. “My mother.”

Natori was silent for a long moment. Finally he said, “I don’t know if I believe you.”

Seiji wasn’t sure whether he ought to laugh. Instead, he felt himself scowling. “You’re really very arrogant, you know. Need something else to torture yourself over?”

Natori looked momentarily taken aback, and then he looked like nothing at all: expressionless, intractable. So intractable, in fact, that when he took Seiji’s head in his hands, Seiji flinched a little - _couldn’t help it, the touch was unexpected_.

“What’re you--?”

Natori pressed a kiss to Seiji’s forehead, just to the left of where the frayed edge of the eyepatch met smooth skin.

“I’m sorry about your mother.”

 _Ah_.

This was a strange display of weakness, Seiji thought detachedly, from that cold spot that sat at the back of his throat and observed the scene as if from above. _What an odd and futile demonstration of fragility_ , said his brain even as his heart raised its portcullis and dredged its moat.

“Don’t apologize.” He felt his hand come up to slip around Natori’s wrist. “You had nothing to do with it.”

“I know,” Natori said as he held him close. “It’s just a turn of phrase. I’m sorry about your eye, too.”

At that, Seiji snorted directly into the soft fabric of Natori’s t-shirt. “Don’t be. It could’ve been much worse. Matoba Ukifune, a clan head from the Nara period, lost an entire arm to the creature while trying to escape its jaws. She died only days later from the infection.”

Natori chuckled softly. “Aren’t you glad we don’t live in the 8th century?”

Seiji stepped back, but his hand lingered on Natori’s chest: laid flat, hovering just over where his heart should be. If he pressed firmly, he could feel Shuuichi’s heartbeat. They stayed like that a moment - or a year, or a hundred. Matoba lost track. Natori cupped his face, brushed a thumb against the place where his dimples formed.

“Yes,” he said. “I’m glad to live now.”

“Me too,” said Natori, leaning in for a kiss - and Seiji, smiling, granted him one.

**Author's Note:**

> the newspaper review that matoba reads aloud is taken almost word-for-word from the 2004 Variety magazine review of Ben Winshaw’s “Hamlet” (yes, the phrase “his cheekbones ache with grief” was really used; i couldn’t make that up if i tried)
> 
> title is from that famous poem about a curse and a mirror ;-)


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